


A Small American Werewolf in DC

by persuna



Series: The smallest werewolf [2]
Category: Pod Save America (RPF)
Genre: Pre-Slash, Werewolves
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-06
Updated: 2018-02-06
Packaged: 2019-03-14 18:14:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,291
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13595625
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/persuna/pseuds/persuna
Summary: Or how Jon Lovett learned to express physical affection within very limited species specific parameters (sort of)





	A Small American Werewolf in DC

**Author's Note:**

> Where is this going? I wish I knew. I think a puppy pile.

Jon loved his family, of course he did, and they loved him. But he’d been trying and failing to ignore an increasing sense that they didn’t like each other for as long as he could remember, and he knew that they did not understand each other. He’d spent his teenage years feeling like an anthropologist placed within his own pack. If it wasn't for the fact that he had felt himself turn into a werewolf on the regular with his own five senses, he would think there had been a mistake. 

It had always been like someone forgot to install half the natural instincts he should have had. He was meant to have a deep tie to the earth and sky of the patch of wilderness his family lived on, and an instinct that cities were an unnatural blight, but Jon had longed to get away since he first understood what New York City was. The pack was meant to provide everything he needed, but Jon had always _wanted_ things, had felt a great formless ambition to do more and be more than the pack could offer him. Humans were meant to be pitied for thinking that wealth and technology and population mass were worth their vulnerable, restricted physical form, but Jon was jealous of the fripperies of non-were life—high fructose corn syrup in many flavours, video games, advanced mathematics, politics, social mobility, stand-up comedy—and repulsed by the idea of hunting his own food like an animal. Perhaps it came down to the fact that he felt like he was a person who was sometimes a wolf, and every other werewolf he knew felt like they were a wolf who had to live the majority of their life shaped as a person for practical reasons. 

Sure, nowadays he liked being a werewolf. It was useful for naps and escaping awkward social situations and, he imagined purely theoretically, self defence. But it was also strange. The wolf was him, but not entirely. Once the change had happened, Jon never felt like a different person, but if he looked at his actions in wolf form he was forced to concede that he did behave differently. Somehow the boundaries he worked on assiduously as a human didn't quite fit when he was a wolf, and an ineffable shift happened. He didn't think or feel different things, but his feelings could lead him to choices he might not have made otherwise. As if he’d had a couple of drinks, but with a much heavier emphasis on sniffing and licking his friends, and latterly his coworkers. 

It felt dangerous, this physical manifestation of his shadow desires. It could lead you to do things like nuzzle your secret high school crush who you consciously knew wanted nothing to do with you so that everyone thought you were gross and creepy for the next two years. It made him cautious of letting the wolf out, around strangers sure, but even more so around people he knew well, where the emotional stakes were much higher.

The first time he took a dog nap in the office, he didn't really think it through. He'd only been there a few weeks and Favreau was really nice, but... he was so nice that it was kind of suspicious. Jon didn't think he was plotting against him, that would be a weird reaction to the person you had chosen to hire, but he assumed that Favreau had to be putting on at least thirty to fifty percent of his laughter and enthusiasm to grease the social wheels or overcompensate for some internal reservations he had about having Hillary's guy in the office. Sure, Jon is funny— it's kind of his thing—but he's not that funny.

So he thought that Favreau was doing the polite, professional, political thing and trying a bit too hard to butter him up. It wasn't something Jon could pull off, but he wasn't _offended_. He filed Favreau away under 'a bit fake', cross referenced with 'sickeningly handsome’, and decided to appreciate the effort that he was putting into creating a welcoming atmosphere. All this to say that he didn't expect to be relaxed around him. He didn't expect to have any embarrassing urges to suppress.

But then Favreau kept it up. Unflaggingly. Even at one am, when they were on their fifth draft of a speech that had had to be scrapped three times with the changing news cycle, a throwaway line could get Favs to tip his head back with laughter. Caustic jokes. Inappropriate jokes. Surreal, silly jokes. Jokes that referenced jokes Jon had made days or weeks ago. Jokes that didn't even make sense! Favs would still lean back in his chair to laugh with his whole body, seemingly truly delighted, and then come back down to glance shyly at Jon, as if he might not have liked the reaction. It was fucking ridiculous. 

Jon could not stop watching Favs laughing. First, he did it with disbelief and a touch of annoyance at the overacting, but increasingly… to enjoy it, with faint amazement that he had done that. Caused Favs to throw his head back so his throat stretched out, smooth and tanned and strong, Adam’s apple bobbing. Created that laugh, deep, round and genuine. It was becoming the best part of making a joke. Jon would tell a joke in a crowded room, and he'd only be looking at Favs, not wanting to miss it.

That was how Jon realised that Favs didn't react that way with everyone. It wasn't only Jon— no one could accuse Favs of being a tough room— but it was him more than anyone else, even Tommy and Dan and people that he knew Favs genuinely liked. So he had to consider the possibility that it wasn't a form of social manipulation. Sure, Favs might have successfully identified that Jon really appreciated a responsive audience and singled him out, but he didn't even give the full body laugh as consistently with the president, and he was at least as funny as Jon and the object of Favs' particularly starry-eyed crush. Jon had run the numbers, and they didn't stack up.

Not to mention that Favs kept seeking out his company- asking if he wanted to grab lunch, inviting him to drinks with hordes of Obama lifers even though he hadn't taken the blood oath he heard they all made in Iowa, including him in meetings and giving him credit and responsibilities until Jon gave in. If this was some kind of long game, Favs deserved to win.

Jon can't pinpoint exactly when this all started to be a problem, but one day he was staying under his desk, minding his own business when Favs came in, and the next, without any conscious choice on his part, he found himself running out to greet Favs as if he didn't see him every damn day. Favs didn’t even miss a beat, just bent one knee to rub Jon’s ears as if he expected this sort of nonsense. Maybe he did. Maybe animals flocked to him wherever he went because he was an actual Disney prince and this was nothing to do with Jon at all. Or maybe the wolf knew something he didn’t yet. Even odds.

 

When Jon moved in with Tommy he planned to keep the wolf side of him very much to the privacy of his room. He liked Tommy a lot by then, even though he was objectively a bro, which meant a very high risk of freaking him out with weird nuzzling.

That worked for quite a while, even as it became harder and harder to remember, and living together became more and more comfortable, and Tommy's scent started to mean home and safety. But everyone has their breaking point.

Jon's came just before he thought Tommy's was going to, after a week that had stretched into at least ten days running of pre-dawn starts and midnight returns home, Tommy cloistered away in meetings all day discussing top secret things or maybe, judging by the look of him, getting fed on by vampires until he was barely alive. The mood around work on Thursday indicated that the crisis had broken that afternoon, but it didn't seem to have perked Tommy up by the time Favs and Jon dragged him out for a late lunch, and it was still after eleven when he came home. Not, based on the auditory information that Jon was able to pick up and the still dark crack round the edge of his bedroom door, to go to bed or eat dinner or unwind with some TV, but to sit in the dark living room in silence, an oppressive pall of misery emanating from him like a dementor. Things were bad. 

Human Jon couldn't go out there and comfort Tommy. He could try, but even if the jokes and sarcastic comments he had to offer did have the capacity to soothe anyone, Tommy would make like a dutifully forbearing clam the moment another person entered the room and clamp down tight, as if everything about him right now wasn't a cry for help. But Jon had a not-technically-secret weapon.

Oh so silently, Jon used his human hand to ease his door open a crack. As he’d thought, Tommy's bedroom door was ajar at the same angle it had been since this morning, and all the lights were, melodramatically, still off. 

Wolf Jon padded into the living room where Tommy was sitting on the couch, silent and pale and staring into nothing.

Tommy startled and said “Oh!” when Jon jumped up next to him, then rubbed hastily at his dry cheeks. "Lovett?"

Instead of replying, Jon put his two front paws on Tommy's shoulder and pushed him over. Tommy went, looking bemused, as if he hadn’t driven Jon to this by acting like a Victorian heroine tortured into a consumptive state by the weight of her tragedy. This close, Jon could sense his heart rate picking up a little and see the flicker of a pulse in his neck.

Manfully, Jon ignored this provocation and didn’t stick his nose into Tommy’s neck. Instead, he settled his body along Tommy's, so that Tommy was prone on the couch under him. One advantage of being small for a wolf— not for canines in general, he stacked up pretty well against those overall thank you very much— was that this didn't actually squash Tommy or prevent him from breathing.

"What are you-" Tommy started, confused, but he fell silent as Jon laid his head between his paws, over Tommy’s heart, and turned what he hoped was a firm but loving look on him. Tommy tried to get up, a weak attempt that Jon would give him the credit of assuming was a mere token, but gave up pretty quickly when Jon rumbled the edge of a growl and pressed his paws more firmly onto his shoulders. 

"Okay, not getting up," he said mildly, still with the air of someone capitulating to the whims of an eccentric and not someone on the edge of being attended to by first responders. He let himself fail back fully onto the cushions though, so Jon rewarded him with a couple of thumps of his tail.

"This is pretty weird," Tommy added, but as usual Jon had correctly identified that he was full of shit because his pulse was already slowing, his body relaxing under Jon as muscles unlocked. He brought one hand up to stroke slowly at the fur at the back of Jon's neck, because not even the weirdness of being physically pinned down by his roommate could stop Tommy Vietor from petting any kind of canine.

They lay like that, in comfortable, soothing silence until Tommy's hand slowed and stopped and fell slack against the sofa. He was asleep. Regretfully, because damn Tommy's firm, warm chest was comfortable, Jon thought of Tommy's circulation and shifted off him. This was the point when he could have gone back to his room, mission accomplished, but no. Instead, in his emotionally compromised animal state, Jon made the far riskier and more exposing choice to snuggle down next to Tommy properly, in the cosy gap between him and the back of the sofa, and fall asleep with him.

Miraculously, when Jon woke up the next morning Tommy was still there, breath steady and invisible eyelashes resting on his absurd cheekbones. Jon was no insomniac, but it was the best night's sleep he'd had in... a length of time that it would be too depressing to calculate, since it would inevitably involve evaluating the last time he'd either had a meaningful relationship or been home with his family at a full moon. Given that he was still asleep, it seemed to have been one of the best night's sleep Tommy had had too, at least since Jon had moved in. But Jon still felt self conscious enough that he performed his stealthiest leap off the sofa, only making enough noise to wake Tommy when he was at a safe distance.

Tommy was still first out of the house, looking vaguely human for the first time all week. He didn't mention their little sleepover when he finally turned the bathroom over, and Jon wasn't going to bring it up if Tommy didn't, but he found a cup of hot coffee in his favourite mug and a covered plate of eggs done how he liked them when he got out of the shower, so he didn't think he'd screwed anything up.

 

His family would always be his pack, even if they disagreed on pretty much everything, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t build his own.


End file.
